Every Yâmen has three great gates barring the way to the inner compound. If the resident official wishes to humiliate you, he has his man stop your cart at the first gate and compels you to enter on foot. Fortunately for us, since it was raining hard, His Excellency had chosen to treat us with marked courtesy. The carts halted at the second gate while Mr. Sowerby's servant ran in with our red Chinese cards. There was a brief wait, and then we drove on through a long courtyard to the inner or screen gate, where massive timbered doors were closed against us. Soon these swung open; the carts crossed a paved yard and pulled up under the projecting roof of the Yâmen porch; and we scrambled down from the carts, while two tall mandarins, in official caps and buttons, dressed in flowing robes of silk and embroidery, came rapidly forward to meet us. One of these, the younger and shorter, I recognized as Mr. Wen, the interpreter for the Shansi foreign bureau.
The other mandarin was a man of ability and charm. Some of us, perhaps, have formed our notion of the Chinaman from the Cantonese laundryman type which we may have seen at his bench or on the Third Avenue elevated railway in New York. This would be about as accurate as to call the coster at his barrow the typical Englishman; just about as accurate as to call the Bowery loafer the typical American. His Excellency appeared to be close to six feet in height; he was erect and lithe of figure, with marked physical grace. He greeted Mr. Sowerby by clasping his hands before his breast and bowing, then turned, and with a genial smile extended his right hand to grip mine. He used no English, but the Chinese language, as he spoke it, was both dignified and musical, and not at all like the singsong jabbering I had heard on the streets and about the hotels.
Ting led the way into a reception-room which was furnished in red cloth and dark woods. There was a seat and a table against each side, and two red cushions on the edge of a platform across the end of the room, with a low table between them. An attendant appeared with tea. Ting took a covered tea bowl in his two hands, extended it towards me, bowed, then placed it on the low stand--thus indicating the seat which I was to take, on the platform. Mr. Wen said, in my ear, "Sit down." Mr. Sowerby was placed at the other side of the stand; the two Chinese gentlemen seated themselves at the two side-tables, facing each other. One thing I remembered from Mr. Sowerby's coaching--I must not touch my bowl of tea. I must not even look at it. The tea is not to drink; it is brought in order that the caller may be enabled to take his leave gracefully. The Chinese gentlefolk are so wedded to life's little ceremonies that guest and host cannot bring themselves to talk right out about terminating a visit. The guest would shiver at the notion of saying, "Well, I must go, now." Instead, he fingers his tea bowl, or perhaps merely glances at it; and then he and his host both rise.